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Interview Lean into marketing Don’t disappear in tough times
Marketing matters in a financial crisis
As economic pressures build, it’s tempting for mortgage brokers to cut back on marketing – but agency boss Chris Hopwood tells Mortgage Introducer that keeping a high profile is key
Brokers shouldn’t ditch their marketing budget in a recession, even if they feel under pressure to manage their costs more tightly. That’s the advice from the head of a specialist marketing agency for the financial services industry.
Chris Hopwood, founder and managing director of FS Partnership, believes many businesses may feel under pressure to cut their costs due to a perfect storm of events, including the war in Ukraine and rising inflation and interest rates. But marketing, he said, is a vital tool in uncertain times.
“We know it’s going to be tough,” Hopwood said. “Make sure you’ve got a clear plan to work in the best and worst-case scenarios and be very fluid and flexible about adapting that. The planning process is all about actively trying to assess different scenarios and being ready to react. Whether you’re a one-man band or a large network, having a marketing plan for the next few months and the year ahead is going to be a really valuable exercise.”
Hopwood’s business offers a range of services – from developing strategic marketing plans to specialist technical writing – aimed at helping its clients to strengthen their brands and achieve growth in a sector that people find complicated even at the best of times.
He points to research from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales suggesting that those businesses that invest in marketing experience more growth than those that scrap or scale back their budgets. Businesses that maintained marketing throughout the 2008 recession enjoyed three-and-ahalf times’ more brand visibility than those that didn’t, data indicates.
Further research, from Analytic Partners – an independent specialist in business measurement and optimisation – found that 60 per cent of international businesses that increased marketing investment between 2007 and 2008 enjoyed an improved ROI.
“I think, probably, lots of people spend time speculating about what might happen and worry about that, rather than actually controlling the bit that they can do, which is putting firm plans in place,” Hopwood asserted. “I don’t think you should be blindly optimistic, but I think if you’ve run a business and come through Brexit and the pandemic, if you’ve successfully navigated your way through that, then understand what you did well then and apply the same principles to the next year,18 months, and you should be in a good place.
“While the things that are causing the problems at the moment are very different, the effects on the economy are pretty much the same. And so, yes, learning the lessons that you’ve learned in the past and doing the same kinds of things but better in the future is a good way to approach it.”
Hopwood advises that it is an important time for mortgage advisors to review their key messages and the positioning they have developed for their services, to ensure they remain relevant in a time of shifting priorities. Communication is key. “I think going into an economically challenging time, everyone being active about that communication among the different channels, from lenders, to mortgage brokers, to people who are looking for a mortgage, the more active you can make it, the better it will be,” he emphasised. “You’ll be able to potentially anticipate
problems and do something about it before it happens rather than waiting for it to happen. If brokers feel that they’re not being heard, then definitely articulate precisely what they need for lenders to adapt their propositions. The more feedback brokers provide, the better.”
Before co-founding FS Partnership in 2014, Hopwood worked for major industry names such as Lloyds, TSB, RBS, and NatWest. “I guess the conclusion I came to is that lots of the marketing agencies supplying services to me and my teams didn’t understand the complexity of the industry and the products and weren’t able to bring it to life,” he reflected. “So my teams
and I often had to make amendments to the work that came in to make sure that it could get through compliance functions, to make sure that it could sell the proposition in the right way, that it understood the consumer. I felt that there was a potential gap in the market for a specialist agency. And eight years ago, I set up, and we’ve been operating ever since and growing as we go along.”
With his industry insight, would Hopwood like to hazard a guess how long the economic downturn will last? “There’s a famous quote by the American business magnate and investor Warren Buffett who said that forecasting may tell you a great deal about forecasters, but it tells you nothing about the future,” he concluded. “And I think anyone trying to predict what’s going to happen over the next one or two years, they shouldn’t have the confidence to try to predict that.” M I
